It’s a moment I’ve been dreading. We’re at the airport in Dunedin, in the car
rental lot. We find our car, and I head over to the driver’s door, and open it.
There’s no steering wheel.
Then I remember, and my wife and I switch sides and I climb
into the little compact we’ve rented for the next 10 days of driving in New
Zealand.
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| Me? Nervous? |
We actually got our international driver’s licences for our
last trip, but one glance at the traffic in Bangkok and Cambodia convinced us
it was best to let others drive, or take the bus. This time, though, we’re in
the wilds of New Zealand’s South Island, and if we want to see anything, we
have to drive.
Driving here is like in Britain- on the left-hand side (or
wrong side, if you’re in North America). That means everything you know is
reversed. Easy enough to say, and do on straightaway highways, but becomes a
lot more complex in cities. Who has right-of-way (or is that left-of-way)?
Which lane is the proper one when turning? How do you pass? And what about the
rules of all those traffic circles?
All things I guess I’m going to find out. Or die trying.
And dying is a distinct possibility. Just 10 days before we
picked up our rental, a Canadian man and his new wife were in an accident. The
wife died, the husband charged with dangerous driving (he had entered the wrong
lane). There were 58 tourist fatalities in the last three years, most involving
improper driving. And thousands of accidents where tourists were involved.
And let’s throw drunk driving into the mix. A student was
charged, the daughter of some prominent lawyers, with hit-and-run just a day or
two previously. Student drinking and driving is simply at epidemic levels. Every day the papers make note of new
fatalities, new impaired-driving charges laid.
Sure makes me want to be on the road.
My wife complains at home that I’m an aggressive driver.
Here, I’m positively grandmotherly. New Zealanders find a vent for their
easygoing nature with their mean-spirited driving. They charge boldly up to the
stop line at intersections, making you wonder if they plan to stop; they start
parallel parking in your spot even as you pull out; and incredibly, there is no
pedestrian-first rule. I have thrown a few fingers already at drivers whizzing
by us as we cross the street (and the seeming national sport of jaywalking
makes the situation even more volatile).
Travelling the speed limit down the highway? You’ll be
passed. And the passing lanes, while few and far between, seem to be informally
a half-kilometer longer than the asphalt actually dictates: more than once
we’ve seen oncoming drivers forced to pull onto the shoulder to let some tardy
driver pass.
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| A common roadside hazard. |
Speed limits are also wildly aggressive. You travel 100km/hr
on the thin, twisty two-lane highways that pass for superhighways in the countryside;
the limit takes effect just as you leave the borders of a town. Speed limits on
curves is about 10k/hr higher than I would expect to see in Canada. And signs
warn you to slow down to 20km/hr when passing a stopped school bus!
Utter insanity.
Thankfully, I got a priceless piece of advice just two days
into our travels. And it came from a
movie- The Fastest Indian- by coincidence a movie about a New Zealander. “This
is true around the world,” a character tells Anthony Hopkins, playing the lead
role. “The driver is always in the centre of the road. If you are not on the
centre line, you’re in the wrong lane.”
Sounds simple, but it grounded me, made for an easy check
every time I was planning my next right-hand turn.
So every moment driving I am concentrating, focussing on the rules
and what could happen next. It actually makes you a much better driver. No
wandering attention, no rubbernecking. After 10 days I was getting the hang of
it. Only pulled into the wrong lane twice, and that was at the start of a day
trip, in our sleepy little town. Before
too long, I even tried passing somebody who had the nerve of going 5k/hr below
the speed limit.
And school kids? Fuck ‘em. They want to live, they better look both ways.
